Explosions that rocked the world

It was 17 years ago, almost to the day, that the world first witnessed the horrific spectacle of a space shuttle exploding in mid-air.

Challenger was only 72 seconds into its flight, arcing away from its Florida launchpad and already barely discernible to the eye, when disaster struck on January 28, 1986.

Caught live on television, the image of the shuttle exploding into a huge fireball stunned the millions watching around the world.

"Can it… can it… oh my God, can Challenger have exploded?" said Rob Navias, an American presenter, as half a million gallons of fuel vaporised in a white flash, showering smoking shards into the Atlantic Ocean.

One of two rocket boosters had leaked, igniting the main liquid fuel tank. All seven crew members died instantly. To the American public, it was a national disaster.

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Its impact was all the more painful because one of the crew was Christa McAuliffe, a teacher chosen as the first ordinary person to take to the skies as part of the United States "citizen in space" programme.

Other disasters and near disasters involving spaceships include:

January 27, 1967

Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire in the Apollo 1 command module during a pre-flight test at Cape Canaveral.

They were training for the first crewed Apollo flight: an earth-orbiting mission was scheduled for the following month and the plan was to go through the entire countdown.

Almost six hours into the test, however, one of the crew reported "fire in the cockpit". Rescue workers were driven back by the heat and were unable to open the hatch. By the time they did, the men had perished.

April 24, 1967

Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz I spacecraft crashed on return to Earth.

April 11-17, 1970

The Apollo 13 lunar landing was cancelled and near disaster ensued when an oxygen cylinder in the command module Odyssey exploded 56 hours into the mission, leaving the crew without power or air 200,000 miles from Earth.

One of the astronauts, Jack Swigert, announced the problem with the now immortal words: "OK, Houston, we have a problem here…"

It was decided to move the three astronauts into the lunar module Aquarius and use it to power a tricky loop around the Moon before returning to Earth.

Despite fears about whether the heat shield could stand the re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, the craft splashed down safely.

June 29, 1971

Three cosmonauts boarded the Soyuz 11 command module from the Salyut 1 space station for their return flight to Earth. As the module entered the atmosphere, air from the cabin leaked out. The crew tried to stem the flow of oxygen but by the time the module had landed, all were dead.

February 23, 1997

A fire erupted on MIR the Russian space station after a crew member, Sasha Lazutkin, attempted to activate an oxygen canister.

Jerry Linenger, a US Navy physician aboard MIR, almost died as his oxygen expired. He was, however, able to fight the fire, which eventually burned itself out.